I’m standing in a darkened room while soft, almost New Age music plays overhead. It’s relaxation-tape music, down to the odd moments of the simulated sounds of rainfall trickling around the carpet and glass.

So, in a sort of Hail Mary pass spurred by the fact the Field Museum moved SUE the T. rex out of the main hall so I have to find a new scene-setting bit for the intro anyway, here is the latest draft of the intro. Hopefully, it’ll whet your appetite to either take the tour or to say, “By gad, why I’m a publisher looking to find hot new properties that will appeal to adult nonfiction readers in the political science segment, the highest earner within Publisher Weekly’s History/Law/Political Science category, which saw 9.3 million unit sales in the first six months of 2017 — a 25 percent increase over the same six months in 2016! It makes great business sense to email this Paul fellow at 1001chicago@gmail.com!”

She cast her head around as her dark eyes scanned the room. All eyes were on her sleek form, the swivel and sway in her walk.

And her lateral nasal supraorbital gland used to expel bloodstream salt accumulated through the repeated ingestion of sea water as she pursued her diet of squid, krill and cuttlefish? Dang. » Read the rest of this entry «

If all went according to plan, the wife and I are currently backpacking through Marseilles following the Tour de France and you’ve already taken bike routes through the history of newspapers and the LGBTQ community.

It’s the smell that gets you. Melting, burning plastic searing the air like the reek of an ‘80s perm.

The machine whirs and shakes, not enough to cause concern, but just enough to get the excitement going. It’s a giant, familiar console topped with a clear plastic bubble so you can see the gears and valves shift and move and shake. » Read the rest of this entry «

“The name is magic,” Dr. Thayer told me as we walked through a gap she had cranked between two of the 80 aisles of dead beetles, roaches, flies and spiders. “So much of taxonomy depends on the name.” » Read the rest of this entry «